Strength in Numbers
by Cardboard Bike
Summary: Finny gets lost in Ikebukuro and accidentally stumbles across someone who is just like him.


_A/N: I generally don't condone crossovers, but these two are… well, they just had to meet. They're both super-strong sweet blonds with tragic backstories, okay? Bear with me while I wrote a whole host of characters I've never written before._

"Gotcha!" Finny swiped an arm through the air, finally clutching his precious hat in both hands. He slung it onto his back, fixing the cord tighter around his neck with a satisfied grin. "You're not getting away again. You're very important to me, y'know."

He turned around expectantly, only to find the street behind him devoid of all life. "Young Master? Sebastian? Where did you go?"

The streets were eerily quiet, a sort of buzzing anticipation tingeing the air, and he forced himself to take deep breaths in order to calm himself. _Don't panic. Sebastian will find you. Sebastian can do anything. _He tried to forget that he wasn't at home in London, and that even if he could find someone – everyone seemed to have disappeared – no one would even speak his language.

He squinted at the nearest road sign, and sighed helplessly. That was no help at all. This country's written language was a series of complicated squiggles he could make neither head nor tail of, and he had no idea how far he'd wandered chasing after his hat. He couldn't even remember where they'd been headed in the first place, come to that. He'd been too distracted by the bright signs and weird food stalls on the side of the road.

An angry growl and a slur of shouted words he didn't understand drew his attention from the strangely empty streets. Finny headed towards the voice, peeking around the corner. Even an angry stranger could probably help him more than an unreadable road sign, after all.

The man was very tall, very blond, and very mad, if the veins popping out of his forehead were any indication of his current mood. He wore a somewhat torn bartender's uniform and seemed to be directing the brunt of his anger at a slightly smaller man dressed all in black. Finny decided he didn't much like the look of the smirk this dark-haired man was sporting.

_Well, I can't just wait around for Sebastian to come find me, I should try and fix things myself, _he decided, and stepped out onto the road. He frowned as he realized he could no longer see the blond man, as his vision was blocked by a large object that seemed to be getting progressively bigger. _Is that a… a vending machine?_

He put out his arms instinctively, and slid back half a metre before the object ground to a stop. Curiously, he dusted off his hands and wandered around it, peering at the other side. It _was _a vending machine, though not like any he'd ever seen before. It seemed to be selling ladies lingerie, of all things, and now that he thought about it he'd never seen a _flying_ vending machine before either.

"Oh!" He hit his forehead with the palm of his hand as he made the obvious conclusion. "It must belong to that blond guy!" It had come from his direction, after all.

He turned, delighted with his hypothesis, only to find that the blond had disappeared, along with his black-haired nemesis. Finny scratched his chin thoughtfully. He really should return it; he supposed that vending machines were quite expensive, and he'd already decided that the blond was his only hope at somehow getting back to the young master.

"Alright," he grinned, and hoisted the vending machine onto his back. The blond was still screaming and seemed to be making a lot of crashing noises, so he just sped off in the direction the sound was coming from.

When he got there, his proposed savior was standing in a thigh deep hole in the asphalt, looking murderous. Grinning happily, Finny jogged over and placed the vending machine down gently in front of him. The blond's glare refocused on his face.

"I brought it back for you," Finny said helpfully. "I think you dropped it."

The blond glared harder, and growled something at him in Japanese. "Oh, right. You probably don't speak English." Finny scratched his head, and desperately searched for any of the few Japanese words he knew. Eventually, he just pointed at the machine and then at the blond. "_Yours._" He grinned, proud of himself for remembering something from Sebastian's lessons. Oh, the butler would be so pleased with him!

The blond just gestured behind him angrily, apparently unimpressed by his grand mastery of the language, and mumbled something of which Finny could only understand _Izaya _– a name, he thinks – and _gone._

"I can put the vending machine back wherever you want it," Finny offered, forgetting the language barrier once again.

The blond just shook his head in an exasperated fashion, threw up his hands and stalked off. Finny lifted the machine back onto his shoulders and stumbled after him. "Wait," he called, and then stopped himself, fumbling for his amateur Japanese. "I mean, _wait._"

The blond kept walking.

Figuring he might have gotten the word wrong, Finny quickened his pace and slid to a stop in front of the man, vending machine balanced precariously on one shoulder. "_Yours. I give._"

The man's expression seemed to twist from one of annoyance to confusion as he finally registered the fact that Finny had _carried_ the heavy machine several hundred metres without any sign of strain.

"I was a test subject," Finny explained helpfully, before the meaning of the evening's events hit him. The vending machine had been coming towards him, which meant that this man must have thrown it – normal people couldn't do that. "Hey, were you an experiment too?" he asked, eyes lighting up.

The blond just stared at him.

"Oh right, you don't understand. I'm a little dumb." Finny laughed at himself, embarrassed. With practiced ease he lowered the vending machine to the ground, and tugged his shirt down so the man could see the lab number stamped on the back of his neck. "_You, me, same?_"

The blond shook his head; frowned. "_What is that?_" he asked, followed by a string of words Finny couldn't grasp.

Finny shrugged. His Japanese was nowhere near good enough to explain that most of his life had been spent locked up in a cell where scientists jabbed him with various drugs and pretty much just treated him like a lab monkey. "Oh!" he said instead, remembering his manners, "Finny!" He pointed to himself proudly.

The blond looked unimpressed, but begrudgingly pointed at himself. "_Heiwajima Shizuo_." He then pointed at the machine. "_Are you an idiot?_"

Finny grinned broadly. "Shizuo-san!"

Shizuo rolled his eyes and looked away, apparently disinterested in the short strawberry blond who'd butted rudely into his afternoon.

"_Same!_" Finny pointed excitedly at himself, and then at Shizuo. "_Strong, strong!_" He hoisted the vending machine up again and spun it around on his finger to emphasize his point.

Shizuo sighed and grabbed his wrist, jerking him forward and letting the machine clatter to the ground, speaking rapidly in Japanese and pulling him away.

"Hey, where are we going?" Finny asked, trotting in an attempt to keep up with his long-legged new friend. "Are we going to find the Young Master?"

Shizuo didn't let up his grip on Finny's arm, instead quickening his pace and barking something short and angry at him.

Finny shrugged. Well, at least they were going somewhere.

Shizuo brought them to a small shop, pushing open the door and scowling at the cheerful jingling of the doorbell. He tossed Finny onto a stool against a bench at the front of the store and yelled something towards the kitchen. A deep voice answered back, and Finny watched in wonder as the tallest, darkest man he'd ever seen appeared behind the counter.

"_Shizuo!_" The man dropped into complicated Japanese and Finny lost interest, gazing instead around the shop with curiousity. It appeared to be a sushi shop, though what was being served looked like the strangest sushi he'd ever seen. He was almost certain the slices on the plate at the other end of the bench had whole octopuses in them, as they were slowly making their way off the plate and down the table leg as the customer chatted to the girl beside him.

The tall man leaned casually over the bench and lobbed a skewer at the lead octopus, effectively nailing it to the table leg. The following sushi scrambled to get back on the plate.

Finny was so into watching the octopuses' plight that he jumped when a hand grasped his shoulder and a pale face leaned past him to speak in Shizuo's face. Abruptly, the man turned around to stare at him, pushing black-framed glasses up his nose and blinking in surprise. "_Who are you?_"

Finny smiled. "_I'm Finny. Shizuo-san's friend."_

"_Friend?" _Shizuo roared, and the tall, dark man reached over and slapped a hand across his mouth, muffling his objections.

"_You're not Japanese?" _The man with glasses asked.

"No, I'm from London!" Finny said proudly.

"Well then, Shizuo's friend," Glasses-Guy said, ignoring Shizuo's outburst, "I'm Shinra." He took his hand off Finny's should and extended it instead. "And this is Celty."

Finny took the hand offered to him and peered over Shinra's shoulder at his motorcycle helmet-wearing partner, whom he hadn't even heard approach. She wiggled her fingers at him in greeting. He turned his attention back to Shinra. "You speak English?"

'Well, yes." Shinra shrugged self-depreciatingly. "When you're an underground doctor you need to know these things to keep yourself safe."

Finny's face grew pale, and he shrunk away, accidentally pressing against Shizuo's side. Shizuo looked positively murderous. "You're a doctor?"

"Ah, yes." Shinra nodded absently, more focused on the fact that Shizuo had bitten through the dark man's fingers and was now speaking rapidly and angrily at him. "I'm not going to touch you. Shizuo wants to know what you are."

"What I am?" Finny looked confused, and carefully angled his body away from the doctor. "I'm a gardener!"

Shinra smiled lopsidedly. "I think he meant more along the lines of how do you have such incredible strength."

"He's… questioning my humanity?" Finny frowned, gripping the bench tightly. "But he's just like me, right? I thought – I thought we were the same."

Shinra patted his arm consolingly. The length of bench between his fingers snapped loudly. "He doesn't really mean it like that. It's more along the lines of _how_ are you like him? He has never met anyone with his… qualities before."

Finny looked down at his hands, knotting his fingers together nervously and surreptitiously dropping the slivers of bench onto the floor. "Well, I was kidnapped or sold to a lab when I was young," he said quietly. "They – they did things to me, gave me injections. I was sick a lot. But then, I got really strong and they couldn't keep me anymore. Then Sebastian found me." He smiled faintly. "Sebastian saved me."

Shinra leaned closer. Finny backed away, knocking over his stool, his head connecting with Shizuo's chin. Shizuo shouted something at Shinra, who shouted back, and waved his arm around over Finny's shoulder. Finny cringed.

Shinra's hands twitched, his face disappointed. "I would just love to examine you," he said wistfully.

"You live with a woman who has no head," a deep voice explained in heavily accented English. "What is so interesting about another boy with super strength?"

Finny's head whipped around, and he stared at the dark man in disbelief. "You also speak English?"

The man inclined his head. "Japanese is my third language. I am Simon." He turned to the doctor, whose eyes hadn't left Finny. "Shinra, the boy is clearly terrified of you. It might be better if you go."

Shinra scowled and looked ready to object, but sighed in defeat when the silent helmeted woman tapped him on the shoulder and held a phone in front of him. He pointed at Shizuo and said something Finny couldn't understand, to which the blond waved a hand dismissively. "I may be seeing you later." He directed this at Finny, earning himself a smack on the head from Celty. "_Goodbye._"

Finny relaxed slightly with the doctor gone, but didn't get back on his stool, even when Simon gestured for him to do so. The dark man directed a tirade of Japanese at Shizuo, which from the words he could understand Finny took to be a retelling of what he had told Shinra.

Shizuo patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. "Shinra is not," he begun clumsily, then trailed off into Japanese.

Simon smiled at Finny. "He said you don't need to be afraid of Shinra, because you could snap him in half easily. Also, Celty would never let him do anything too bad."

Finny smiled back, aware that Shizuo's hand had not left his shoulder and gaining comfort from it. "_Thank you._"

"He's not usually this nice to people," Simon added, winking at him and jerking his head towards Shizuo. "I think he likes you."

"I," Shizuo coughed uncomfortably, "Strong because angry. No doctor. Protect little brother."

Finny nodded in understanding. "I used to hate being abnormal like this, but if it allows me to protect the young master then I am glad of it."

"Which you should be doing right now," a stern voice reprimanded.

Finny spun around in surprise, his eyes lighting up. He'd almost forgotten that he'd been searching for his coworkers. "Sebastian, you found me!" He leaped forward to hug the butler but was held at arms length by the fingertip of a white glove.

"You were specifically told to keep your eyes on me at all times and stay close."

"But I lost my hat and had to go get it," Finny protested, and pointed to Shizuo excitedly. "And then I found him and guess what! He's super strong too!"

"Charming," Sebastian said dryly. "We need to leave now, Finnian."

"Do I have to? I've never found someone like me before." Finny tried to hide his disappointment, without much success.

"We need to be moving on," Sebastian prodded.

"Okay." Finny sighed deeply, but obeyed nonetheless. "_Goodbye._ Goodbye_. _Hopefully I can see you again."

Shizuo nodded tersely in reply, glaring suspiciously at the butler, and spat something in Japanese.

Sebastian simply regarded him with calm eyes in return and bowed, replying sharply in the local dialect before ushering Finny out onto the street.

Simon slid a cup of something purple over the counter, smiling at the way the blond's eyes hadn't left the door since the British boy had left. _"You want to talk?"_

Shizuo scowled at him and sniffed at the cup cautiously. _"About what?"_

Simon raised an eyebrow. _"You tried with that boy. I've never seen you try with anyone before."_

Shizuo shrugged one shoulder. _"He's like me. Of course I want to understand. Particularly because that stupid butler told me to keep away from him." _He glared at his drink. _"Stupid dark-haired red-eyed ass looks like Izaya-kun anyway. He's probably worthless."_

Simon grinned slyly. "_You're jealous."_

"_You say any more and I'll do enough damage to this place to put you out of business for months." _Shizuo ran his fingers over the hole in the bench where Finny had snapped the wood.

"_What are you really thinking?" _Simon asked.

"_Truthfully?" _Shizuo kept his eyes on the bench. "_I could touch him and he wouldn't break."_

Simon dropped his own eyes to the bench, finally out of things to say. _"Yes," _he said eventually. "_Yes, there is that."_

"_You think he'll ever come back?"_

The question didn't need an answer, but Simon closed it anyway. _"No. He'll return to his life, and you to yours."_

Shizuo sighed heavily, and poked at his drink. _"I suppose. Life goes on."_


End file.
